A relatively recent telephone service known as "Caller ID" allows a person who is receiving a telephone call to determine the calling party before the call is answered. This is done by having the calling telephone device transmit information, such as the phone number of the calling device, the name of the calling party, etc. The receiving telephone can use the information to determine whether to allow the call to go through, to block the call, or to display the information on a display at the receiving telephone.
Additional features provided by software created by third party manufacturers include announcing the Caller ID by voice synthesis so that the caller's name and/or number can be heard audibly by a person at the receiving telephone. This is useful, for example, where the receiving telephone does not have a visual display. Also, this is useful when the receiving party is not near their telephone so they cannot see the display.
A drawback with these Caller ID features is that it is difficult for a called party to remember who a caller is based on the Caller ID information. The calling party may not have provided a name so that the telephone number may be all that is available from the Caller ID. Even when a person's name is provided this may not be enough to jog the called party's memory into knowing who the caller is. This is especially true where the calling party is a company, or has some other commercial purpose as salesperson. In these cases the information provided by Caller ID may be obscure so as not to completely identify the calling party in a way that is helpful to the called party. In other words, the mere display of numbers and names is often a poor mnemonic to help with a called person's memory.
Another drawback with Caller ID is that the current Caller ID features do not integrate well with video services provided in connection with today's telephones. For example, video conferencing is becoming more popular, as is the general transmission of video or still picture images over the telephone line. When a participant is engaged in a video conference that participant may be viewing one or more images of people in the conference on a display device such as a large telephone display, personal computer or television. During the video conference a new caller may attempt to call into the participant. The display of the new caller's telephone number and name may be insufficient for the participant to identify the caller. Thus, the participant cannot make a good decision about whether to break from the video conference to answer the call. Also, the feature of having the incoming phone number and/or caller's name audibly announced would not work well in a video conferencing environment where the participant does not want to miss any of the video conferencing conversation.
Thus, it is desirable to provide the Caller ID service with additional features so that it is more useful to a user.